YMF Baltimore

3 Marketing Themes for 2018

By Eliza Theiss on Nov 20, 2017 in Marketing, News

A savvy group of marketers joined us for learning, networking and fun at the bi-annual Yardi Marketing Forum (YMF) in Baltimore last week. During the event, attendees explored the latest trends in digital marketing, tips and tricks to optimize outcomes, and real estate technology. As noted by Esther Bonardi, Yardi vice president of marketing, the event is “all about helping you tap into your inner marketing genius.”

Here are some of the top digital marketing themes covered:

1. Get in touch with your audience

As marketers, we’ve traditionally divvied up our target audiences by demographic information. In today’s noisy digital landscape, we need to meet our customers where they’re at. Speakers Brad Downs, vice president of marketing for the Baltimore Ravens, and Brad Batesole, staff author at LinkedIn, shared strategies to better reach target audiences.

Drawing from his fifteen years of experience in sports marketing, Downs stressed the importance of moving from brand first to fan first. “It’s that fan first mentality. Our fans are incredibly important to us. Fans want to feel as important as they are,” he said.

By focusing on fans first, opportunities to engage and foster fandom become easier to identify. Downs demonstrated that life stage marketing goes beyond traditional demographic segmentation, resulting in better customer experiences, tailored events and increased engagement.

For the Ravens, life stage segmentation resulted in targeted fan development campaigns focused around women and adolescents. This included Purple, a community building initiative to cultivate the female fan base, and RISE, a football outreach program for local children and high schoolers in emerging Ravens strongholds. Life stage segmentation helped draw 130,000 fans to Ravens marketing events,  development of an international audience, and an average attendance of 71,000 people at each home game.

At Wednesday’s marketing master class, Batesole discussed digital techniques to hack the millennial renter experience. “Marketing segmentation is getting the right message to the right person at the right time,” he stated. Providing transparent messaging to a segmented audience – from your brand voice to your content to your ads – helps build brand trust. Batesole recommended segmenting millennials into three life stages: 18-24 years of age, 25-30 years of age, and 31-36 years of age. He suggested auditing your content mix along with the visual components of your brand, with a focus on engagement for each life stage.

For property marketers, this poses several questions:

• How can we engage our prospects and residents in more meaningful ways?
• How can we tailor the experience to each customers’ life stage?
• Are people engaging with your content? If not, how can you fix it?
• What visual components are you serving to your audience? Is it segmented to serve all your target audiences?

2. Automate, automate, automate

Throughout the week, technology came up as a key success driver for today’s busy marketers. During the “Lead Attribution in a Multichannel World” session, panelists Israel Carunungan of Greystar, Mia Wentworth of Monarch Investments, and Holli Beckman of WC Smith discussed the buyer journey through the lens of technology.

Wentworth maintained that “single touch [attribution] is not telling the full story.” For data-focused marketers, we know people almost always come from somewhere else before getting to a property’s website. Yet, identifying viable lead sources has been difficult with currently available technologies.

For more on how multifamily is falling short on lead attribution, we recommend checking out Beckman’s informative article on the subject.

During Learning Labs, YMF attendees discussed various forms of technology and automation. Communication methods like SMS, text-to-call and call automation offer marketers easy access to residents and a faster way to reach prospects. Similarly, automated marketing, like appointment reminders and feedback surveys, provide self-service and low-touch entry points for both prospects and residents.

Shared Paul Yount, Yardi industry principal for marketing solutions: “Hope is not a strategy. Why not automate to ensure you’re set up for success? You don’t have to automate every follow-up, but start with baby steps, maybe three to four to start.”

A few ideas to get started with marketing automation:

For prospects:

• Self-service appointment scheduler
• Tour appointment reminders using templates in RentCafe
• Post-tour emails with a promotional code for the rental application fee

For residents:

• Post move-in feedback surveys at multiple points in the resident lifecycle
• Scheduled maintenance reminders
• Text, text-to-call and email automation, especially during emergencies

Want more ideas? Download our free eBook and discover nine marketing automation strategies you can implement at your properties now.

3. Kindness matters

Socially responsible companies are attractive – to your current and prospective residents, and to employees. Research has shown that 82% of consumers spend more with brands that cared about causes they found important. For employers, 83% of millennials are more loyal when their workplace cares about a cause. Doing good showcases your commitment to the communities you serve and the values you cultivate as an organization.

During “The YMF Show” with Paul Yount, Yardi clients explored corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how marketers can be energized for good. Featured panelists included Jen Piccotti of ManagInc, Jessica Itzel of Bozzuto Management, and Yardi’s Esther Bonardi.

In ManagInc’s recently published Multifamily CSR Benchmark Study, Piccotti found that employee turnover correlated with resident turnover rates. Data in the study suggested that helpful programs, like recycling, were only offered at 60% of communities. Additionally, key employee benefits, such as paid parental leave, were lacking.

So, what makes for an effective corporate social responsibility program? On the importance of CSR in business, Jessica Itzel of Bozzuto explained: “It’s a staple. It’s not setting you apart. It’s just part of being a good company.” Itzel shared five tips for crafting a thoughtful CSR plan:

• Don’t talk about it, be about it – CSR is not an opportunity for a PR blitz
• Give employees a voice
• Provide a platform and resources for giving
• Leverage your networks – internally and externally
• Advocate – make it part of the everyday conversation at your company

We hope the insights discussed at the Yardi Marketing Forum will inform your digital marketing strategies as you plan for 2018. Experience the week and check out the engagement on social media.

We’ll be planning for our spring event, which will be held in Beverly Hills on April 9-11, 2018. Registration isn’t open yet, but stay tuned for updates!